Computer users can access many information resources on an expansive international network of computer networks known as the Internet. The WWW is a, graphical subnetwork of the Internet. With common "web browser" software such as the NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR and INTERNET EXPLORER browsers, the users can readily access Internet information and services provided by web servers on the WWW.
Many Internet services allow communications between users. For example, two or more computer users may access a designated web server providing a "text-chat" service, whereby users may interactively communicate in text with one another in real time.
Computer users can also share a web browsing experience using a collaborative browsing scheme disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,862330 issued Jan. 19, 1999 to Anupam et al. In accordance with this scheme, the users are provided with capabilities of collaborative or shared browsing of hypertext markup language (HTML) documents at various uniform resource locators (URLs) (or website addresses) on the WWW. Specifically, in a collaborative browsing session, the users are able to go from one URL to another in a synchronous manner and browse the same HTML documents provided at the URLs. At the same time, the users are also able to exchange information among themselves in text.